Area municipality urging ministry to pay up for 401 false alarms

False alarms on Canada’s busiest highway – and a provincial system that doesn’t reimburse fire departments for called-off emergencies – have one London-area municipality seeing red, ink that is.

The Municipality of Thames Centre is crunching emergency response numbers and finding nearly half of the calls on Highway 401 to which it’s dispatched are cancelled en route, a reality that’s costing its fire department tens of thousands of dollars a year.

“It’s an expense to Thames Centre that’s through no fault of Thames Centre,” said Mayor Jim Maudsley. “If there’s an accident and we get reimbursed, why can’t we be paid if there’s no accident and we get cancelled en route? We go through all the same steps to get there.”

The Ministry of Transportation reimburses municipal departments that respond to calls on Highway 401 or other major provincial highways at a rate of $465.42 a truck, to a maximum of three trucks. That sum helps cover the cost of using the vehicle, the firefighters on board and their equipment.

When firefighters complete the call, they can bill the ministry for the service.

If they’re dispatched and called off en route, municipalities foot the bill.

That rubs Maudsley the wrong way.

“All the guys get to the hall, they get in the trucks, the trucks take off and then they get cancelled,” Maudsley said. “Meanwhile, we as a municipality then pay our volunteer firefighter for their time, plus the expense of the truck going out all the time. That adds up over the years.”

Between January and the end of April this year, the Thames Centre department was called out to 33 incidents on its stretch of Highway 401 east of London. About 45 per cent of the time, calls were cancelled en route, according to data compiled by the department.

On average, the department is losing $1,653 for each 401 emergency response that’s called off, the report presented to council last week said.

“The only way to absorb (the cost) is through taxes,” he said. “The residents of Thames Centre are paying for this added cost.”

In 2015, Warwick Twp. raised concerns about the lack of reimbursement for no-service calls, one of many municipalities all along many 400-series highways that share that same frustration, Boyes said.

“It’s a very real concern . . . This has been an ongoing issue with the MTO for many years,” he said. “We are actively trying to get a meeting with the new minister now.”

Boyes is hoping to bring the issue to Transportation Minister John Yakabuski before the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference in Ottawa Aug. 19 to 22.

The provincial reimbursements are there to assist municipal fire departments that, for geographical reasons, are called on to respond to highway crashes.

In northern Ontario, Boyes said, fire departments get paid by the ministry when they respond to no-service calls because crews have to travel longer distances.

He wants to see a better system in southern Ontario, too.

“When any municipality that services a 400-series highway gets a call, they activate and send up to three trucks out there because it’s an emergency,” Boyes said. “The municipalities are just asking to be reimbursed for the services they provide.”

However, in an email response to reporters, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Transportation was unsympathetic.

The residents of Thames Centre are paying for this added cost.

Mayor Jim Maudsley

“The ministry is not considering changing our policy for reimbursement for no-service calls in southern Ontario at this time,” the email said. “The ministry reimburses municipalities in Northern Ontario for responding to no-service calls in recognition of the unique geographic challenges in the north.”

London is staffed by a full-time fire department, so when crews are dispatched to 401 calls that don’t pan out, it’s less of an issue.

“We’re already paying for them to be here on a 24/7 basis anyways,” Burt said. “We don’t see a lot of money come back in from the MTO responses on 400-series highways anyways . . . We use it as a partial cost recovery.”

Messages left for the Ministry of Transportation seeking comment were not returned Tuesday.

Maudsley is hoping to bring the issue to the ministry at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference next month, not just for Thames Centre, but for its neighbouring communities too.

“Since we’ve grabbed hold of this, we’ve had a lot of other municipalities in the county want to know how we’re going to proceed,” he said. “They’ve got the same situation.”

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